Rethinking Reputation Management

The impact of social media on today’s Web is unmatched; dare I say, even by
search. When it comes to “going social” with our websites and business there are
as many benefits as there are drawbacks, however. Along with the multitude of
brand advocates you will acquire, you are sure to encounter more than a few, very
vocal detractors along the way — such is business on the Web. What’s more, the
social Web moves fast — much faster than any one person can keep up with.
Enter reputation management, a practice that has not gone unnoticed by businesses
both large and small.

A business and personal reputation is measured
by your consumers’ perception of the brand’s
products and services. However, so much focus is
spent looking inward that we often miss all the activity
going on elsewhere — the origin of many, if
not most opportunities and threats. As such, using
reputation management solutions and services
that accurately and affordably help manage brand
equity and awareness is a wise investment.

Continued below...

Working TogetherWhy the busy intersection at the
corner of social media marketing and
search engine optimization (SEO)?
Learning how to work together pays
dividends. The results of a balanced
approach to social media participation
and SEO in a ‘fresher is better’
content landscape is that more information
will be exposed, increasing
the likelihood of awareness.
“Social media remains one of the
fastest growing vehicles for online
branding and engaging in consumer
conversations,” says Eric Papczun,
vice president of SEO and feeds at
Performics.

Papczun went on to
address how online reputation
management is not only about proactively
highlighting social commentary
but balancing negative and positive
opinions. “A solid and well-optimized
presence on Facebook, Twitter and
other social networks can help a
brand own more of the search engine
results page (SERP) real estate.
Accordingly, this keeps positive
brand content on higher ranking
positions and pages, reducing the
reach and potential damage that
disgruntled consumers, unfavorable
media sites and other negative
content can impose on a brand.”

Online reputation management software is the
new must-have solution, and businesses are buying
in. The Marchex Reputation Management
platform was named a finalist in the American
Business Awards’ New Product or Service of the
Year category, for one. SuperMedia’s SuperPages
will make available the Yext reputation management
tool to its advertisers over the next few
months. These are just two examples of noteworthy
happenings in the reputation management
space, among dozens of other perfectly suitable
vendors clamoring for your attention.

But what of those without an existing reputation?
Most small businesses have not nearly
enough brand equity to consider investing in a solution
that monitors what their few customers and
prospects have to say about their business.

Reputation Management in Reverse
It’s time to rethink reputation management solutions
as they have been offered in the past. Ask
yourself: How closely am I looking at my competition’s
reputation? The likelihood that it’s only in
a cursory fashion is quite good.

Identifying the companies you are actively
competing against should be the first step, but
there are several others. Here are a few to help
you rethink reputation management. Keep in
mind that while you can set up an ad-hoc solution
on your own, commercial reputation management
and monitoring solutions provide the
deepest insight.

Track: To locate competitors, head straight to
the search engines; enter search terms representative
of your business and make notes of those
vendors found most often, and their corresponding
websites and social media properties.
Spend time noting not just the website URL, but
the company name and the names of their products
and employees, too (take a detour to
LinkedIn to find them). Once the list is complete,
make those search terms and phrases the
ones to track.

Follow: Should the competition already have an
established audience on social media, most of the
legwork is already done. For example, follow some
of the competition’s followers on Twitter, taking
note of those accounts. Then, after a week or so,
check to see if any of those individuals have followed
you back. If so, send a direct message announcing
who you are, why you chose to follow
them, and your intentions. It is not an uncommon
practice for heavy social media users of Twitter to
set up an autoresponder to greet and reply to a new
follower — another opportunity to communicate
with a new prospect.

Active Social Marketing in Practice: Let’s say your
restaurant and a neighborhood competitor share
Twitter followers. If you notice on Twitter that a
group of fans was meeting for lunch at the competitor’s
place, consider sending that group a note
(perhaps with a coupon included) inviting them to
your restaurant. You will need to constantly monitor
the real-time universe for reaction but good opportunities
are present.

Engage: Posting user-generated content online
today is easier than ever. Within seconds, customers
can post reviews, kudos, comments and
complaints directly from their mobile devices and
applications to any number of sites. Since most
content is consumed right away, it makes sense to
constantly interact with your existing audience and
look to expand your social network when opportunities
present themselves. Myriad social tools online
offer the ability to interact with followers and
competitors. Using them means gaining valuable
insights about the competing business and provides
a chance to make informed choices when it comes
to developing strategies to increase market share.
Engaging consumers in context, based on their current
feelings or interactions with your brand is the
only way to build mind share and loyal customers,
so watch intently and tread carefully.

Monitor: Once you identify the competition, follow
their core audience and engage them them, it’s time
to monitor the reaction. Most reputation management
services provide sentiment analysis to provide
insights into the mood and tone of comments and
conversations you have successfully stirred up.
Continued below...

New Kid on the
Reputation
Management Block
MyRepMan from Moon Valley Software
uses an interesting two-sided
approach to monitoring and managing
a merchant’s online reputation.
A detailed report of the merchant’s
current standing online includes
listings across more than 50 local
search sites, IYPs, category-specific
sites, mentions through blogs, news
sites and tweets, and captures reviews
from sources that provide
them (e.g. Yelp, Yahoo! Local, etc.)
and paid-placement advertising,
which the merchant can instruct
MyRepMan to track. "There are many
other existing services but they are
more focused on what others are
saying on social networks,” says
Damian Rollison, Director of
Research and Development at Moon
Valley Software. “What we are
showing users are places they can
control and extend the brand.”
Once the merchant has a good
overview of its online presence, the
service goes to work by amplifying
that presence — submitting business
profiles to sites based on their
predetermined priority and providing
monthly progress reports to keep
the merchant informed along the
way. Users of the platform can
also run a comparative report that
identifies competitors and measures
your reputation against theirs.

The final step? Repeat the process. Track new
competitors and their followers, engaging that audience
frequently and building your social network
with one competitor’s downfall after the next.

Whether you have brand equity and brand
awareness or not, it has been proven time and again
that knowing what customers and prospects are
saying and feeling about your business is of importance
— the same holds true for what is being said
about the competition. Consider today the first day
of Reputation Management 2.0.

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5 comments

So far, I think social media has been a disaster for small businesses. It seams that many of these sites are full of people who think they everything about a product (in my case, the automotive aftermarket, where everybody is an expert) and have nothing else to do but flame somebody else because the have a different opinion. Most of my clients have been in business 20-30 years and an have excellent reputation with they're customers and competitors. They have depended on print media, trade shows and word of mouth for sales. Now we spend a lot of time trying to tailor our message and chasing after things that said that aren't even true. It's had a very negative impact as far as I'm concerned. The problem with the web is that anybody can say anything and you have no defense.

This will lead to more fragmentation of the "Online Presence", having to keep up with what is being said about you in every nook and cranny of the internet, before Google decides that the comment is valid and aggregates it into your search results!

Let's face it. If you sell products or services, on the internet or otherwise, prospective consumers are more and more likely to google you to help them make the purchase/no purchase decision. Ignore that reality at your own peril. Smart consumers will be able to read between the lines in information they read by public, anonymous, posters. The problem lies when critical public posts are intelligently written. There often may be valid points made that you need to address and correct in your product or service. It's a conversation that should not be ignored.

Online Reputation management has only come in the spotlight in recent years due to the explosion of the popularity of social media websites. In fact, reputation management has been around for almost as long as businesses have been around. Though real world methods might not translate well into the internet, there are still parallels to be drawn. It is all about the branding and image.

Everyone in business knows how important branding is. While most businesses are focusing on their marketing effort, not as many are actively paying attention to the reputation of their competitors. I think this is where the reputation management software come in. I like what you have said about reverse reputation management. It is a great way to track your competitors and make the proper adjustments to your own branding or marketing efforts.